Free The A B C Murders by Agatha Christie

in a small,
     neat kitchen.
    I was about to shut the door behind me - but found an unexpected resistance. The next
     moment Poirot had slipped quietly into the room and shut the door behind him.
    “Mademoiselle Barnard?” he said with a quick bow.
    “This is M. Hercule Poirot,” I said.
    Megan Barnard gave him a quick, appraising glance.
    “I've heard of you,” she said. “You're the fashionable private sleuth, aren't you?”
    “Not a pretty description - but it suffices,” said Poirot.
    The girl sat down on the edge of the kitchen table. She felt in her bag for a cigarette.
     She placed it between her lips, lighted it, and then said in between two puffs of smoke:
    “Somehow, I don't see what M. Hercule Poirot is doing in our humble little crime.”
    “Mademoiselle,” said Poirot, “what you do not see and what I do not see would probably
     fill a volume. But all that is of no practical importance. What is of practical importance
     is something that will not be easy to find.”
    “What's that?”
    “Death, mademoiselle, unfortunately creates a prejudice. A prejudice in favour of the
     deceased. I heard what you said just now to my friend Hastings. 'A nice bright girl with
     no men friends.' You said that in mockery of the newspapers, And it is very true - when a
     young girl is dead, that is the kind of thing that is said. She was bright. She was happy.
     She was sweet-tempered. She had not a care in the world. She had no undesirable
     acquaintances. There is a great charity always to the dead. Do you know what I should like
     this minute? I should like to find some one who knew Elizabeth Barnard and who does not
     know she is dead. Then, perhaps, I should hear what is useful to me - the truth.”
    Megan Barnard looked at him for a few minutes in silence whilst she smoked. Then, at last,
     she spoke. Her words made me jump.
    “Betty,” she said, “was an unmitigated little ass!”

The A B C Murders

Chapter 11
    MEGAN BARNARD
    As I said, Megan Barnard's words, and still more the crisp businesslike tone in which they
     were uttered, made me jump.
    Poirot, however, merely bowed his head gravely.
    “A la bonne heure,” he said. “You are intelligent, mademoiselle.”
    Megan Barnard said, still in the same detached tone:
    “I was extremely fond of Betty. But my fondness didn't blind me from seeing exactly the
     kind of silly little fool she was - and even telling her so upon occasion! Sisters are
     like that.”
    “And did she pay any attention to your advice?”
    “Probably not,” said Megan cynically.
    “Will you, mademoiselle, be precise.”
    The girl hesitated for a minute or two.
    Poirot said with a slight smile:
    “I will help you. I heard what you said to Hastings. That your sister was a bright, happy
     girl with no men friends. It was - un peu - the opposite that was true, was it not?”
    Megan said slowly:
    “There wasn't any harm in Betty. I want you to understand that. She'd always go straight.
     She's not the week-ending kind. Nothing of that sort. But she liked being taken out and
     dancing and - oh, cheap flattery and compliments and all that sort of thing.”
    “And she was pretty - yes?”
    This question, the third time I had heard it, met this time with a practical response.
    Megan slipped off the table, went to her suitcase, snapped it open and extracted something
     which she handed to Poirot.
    In a leather frame was a head and shoulders of a fair-haired, smiling girl. Her hair had
     evidently recently been permed; it stood out from her head in a mass of rather frizzy
     curls. The smile was arch and artificial. It was certainly not a face that you could call
     beautiful, but it had an obvious and cheap prettiness.
    Poirot handed it back, saying:
    “You and she do not resemble each other, mademoiselle.”
    “Oh, I'm the plain one of the family. I've always known that.” She seemed to brush aside
     the fact as unimportant.
    “In what way exactly do you